Friday, May 2, 2014

Are you loosing Mobile Traffic?

We are in one of the most exciting phases of business today. Brick and Mortar shops are giving way to computers which in turn are paving the way for mobile and hand held devices. There is a marked increase in the volume of business being generated on mobile and other devices like tablets. Smart Phone ownership has already reached staggering levels and is steadily increasing. Already 40% of people use a mobile to check e-mails and browse the web. Mobiles have already become the preferred platform for accessing Internet and are also cornering a huge chunk of e-commerce business. Many companies have jumped on the mobile bandwagon by offering websites designed for hand held devices but they are unable to meet the expectations of the mobile customers.

A mobile interface is unique as it has a lot of restrictions. The most important one is the screen size that has an important bearing on the way in which customers interact with a website. ‘Fat Finger Syndrome’ is a common problem associated with accessing websites on mobile devices. It originates due to the fact that a user is unable to click on an icon on the screen due to its small appearance. Another problem unique to a mobile site is of upload times. The slow Internet connectivity often leads to heavy upload times for a website on a mobile device. It is important to develop websites that are flexible and can adjust well to the mobile environment. Let us look at a few ways in which you can make your website more responsive.

Build an adaptive layout: Websites created for computers and laptops are more rigid in nature. They have clearly marked boundaries that make it difficult for them to adapt on a mobile device. The trick lies in developing flexible grids that can adapt to any size dynamically. A simple way to do this is to have a clean HTML without relying too much on CSS and JS. It is a technical process and should be handled only by expert web designers.

Focus on the font size: Fonts are an important aspect of a mobile interface as they determine the way in which the customers interact with your website. Both the size and style of the font is important in this regards. Use a font size that makes your options visible on the screen and allows the users to click on them. Also, try and use bright font styles that add a dash of creativity to the website. The appearance of fonts can have an impact on the mood of the users and affect their buying behavior.

Monitor your images: You can be magnanimous with the size of your images on a desktop but a mobile device has its own restrictions. Heavy images and pictures will increase the upload time for your website and simply irritate the customers. A good idea would be to insert thumbnails on your mobile site and remove unnecessary images.

Manage the content: Content is still the king on websites, but it has to be customized to suit the requirements of a mobile site. Verbosity in content will not produce any results and only increase the upload times. Reduce excessive content from your site and focus on adding suitable Product Descriptions. If the recent updates from Google are anything to go by then products descriptions are all set to acquire more importance in SEO search. Lucid and precise content will make your mobile website more responsive.

Developing a responsive website is a creative process and you will surely enjoy being a part of it. Partnering with an experienced developer will help you to customize your website and make it perform better on a mobile device. A flexible approach will help you to enjoy these exciting times in business!